130 years of Olympia: Joseph Oller and Bruno Coquatrix, the fathers of the legendary place

The Olympia, the Moulin Rouge and the Paris Mutuel have the same father, Joseph Oller. At the end of the 19th century, this entrepreneur was the king of parties in Paris. Inspired by cockfights where money is bet that he saw in Spain, he had the idea of ​​putting on sale the first tickets of what became the PMU.

In 1889, he celebrated the Universal Exhibition by creating the Moulin Rouge, which he made into the first palace for women. On April 12, 1893, he innovated again by inaugurating a performance hall where, he assured, luxury and beauty would surpass anything seen in Paris. Boulevard des Capucines, on the site of an amusement park, Les Montagnes Russes, of which he was also at the origin, he built what he called a “music shed”. The formula did not seem particularly strong to attract the public, he had the idea of ​​looking for its equivalent in English. Not speaking a word of Shakespeare's language, he inquired and learned that “hangar” could be translated as “hall”. This is how he coined the expression “music hall”.

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In 1929, like many other places in Paris, the Olympia became a cinema, directed by Jacques Haïk. When he died in 1953, his widow wondered about the future of this room, which she did not know what to do with. She talks about it to her manager, who whispers this information to one of her colleagues who works at the Comédie-Caumartin, in the neighboring street. The latter entrusts it to Bruno Coquatrix, the director of this theater. He is a musician, conductor, songwriter and impresario. He thus briefly helped Môme Piaf, in 1936, when she was wrongly accused of complicity in the assassination of Louis Leflée, her mentor.

Having always dreamed of a place dedicated to song, he immediately asked Madame Haïk for a meeting. An agreement was quickly reached and, with the help of friends and colleagues who lent him the necessary money, he became the owner of L'Olympia. On February 5, 1954, Lucienne Delyle and Aimé Barelli's orchestra opened the ball, with an unknown person called Gilbert Bécaud as the opening act. He will then triumph on this stage 33 times. “Mr. 100,000 Volts” is part of the legend of a room which, 130 years after its opening, remains resolutely trendy.